Our first house hack in Alexandria, VA

[Daniel Amsalem]

Investment Info:

Townhouse buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $551,800
Cash invested: $35,000

3/2 townhouse in the DMV, NOVA region on a 0.13 acre lot. 2 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, kitchen and laundry on main level, walkout basement with 3/4 bath, kitchenette, and washer dryer. Our townhouse is one-half of a duplex, the other half is a separate lot

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

My wife and I wanted to start simple and easy. We saved for 9 months, I was on the MLS daily, every weekend I'd drive to the top 5-7 houses. After 3 months, I found this house. I brought my wife there on Friday night (no agent), and loved the curb appeal. We saw they had an open house the following afternoon so we planned to stop by again. That night we found an agent, the following day we got preapproval/preinspection, that Monday we made an offer that was accepted that afternoon!

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

I found the deal on HomeSnap, the app for our local MLS. We didn't actually negotiate. However, to make our offer more appealing, we waived the inspection contingency, instead doing a pre-inspection and then proceeding based off of what he shared. We also had an escalation clause. We thought our max offer should be $550,000, but our agent suggested we escalate using odd numbers so we'd finish at odd numbers. Our max bid ended at $551,800 and we won against a competing offer by $1,800!

How did you finance this deal?

We put 5% down and went with a conventional loan to secure a better rate (2.85%)

How did you add value to the deal?

We furnished the basement and have been getting Mid Term Rental tenants (30 nights+). We actually bought below market and appraised at $575,000. Since then, several comps have sold at around $600,000.

What was the outcome?

We've been living here since the end of August and our living expenses went down from $2,500 (high-rise rent and utilities) to as low as $1,200. House-hacking has been exceptional!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

We thought we were going to get Short Term Rental tenants (<30 nights) but FairFax county has very strict restrictions. We've since changed our strategy to Mid Term Rental tenants (30+ nights) and are doing well.

[John McKee]

Congrats on the deal.  I'm a local as well. So by renting out the basement your saving $1,300 a month and were lucky to get some market value equity in the process.  So what's next? 

[Sarita Scherpereel]

Congratulations! You've made such a comfortable space, it's no surprise folks would want to stay. Look forward to hearing about your next deal!